2 posts tagged “shopping”
I will begin by saying I'm not one of your hardened shoppers who stalks and waits for the deals and such... I just went mainly as I wanted to gift Sol and Aurelia their presents early for Christmas. The line was terribly long... We all waited in line by the loading docks at about 4:45am in the chill cold. Personally, I regretted not wearing my wool coat out as I froze pretty quickly. We all were talking about some of the old times in our lives and trying to laugh to forget the bitter cold. Once 5:00am hit, the store opened the flood gates... What I witnessed was pure animal-like shopping chaos. People shuffling, mass hoarding items, waiting like cattle to get claim checks for high demand items... It was something that would get companies like OSHA concerned.
The art of Black Friday shopping has seriously evolved since the advent of new consumer technologies. I saw many people with mobile phones trying to have other family members triangulate items together to rendezvous at a central point to ensure they would get the best sale items. Some power shoppers had their Bluetooth headsets on so both hands could focus on grabbing items... Of course with human nature, you had people yielding to their territorial instincts of hoarding items and fighting with others over a single material item because it was the last one on sale. The local police were on hand to handle things like major riots, which I didn't see any of those luckily.
My main purpose was to try picking up a 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo ($29.99) for my PSP for movie purposes but well, that was a failure as they changed the deal to a 2GB model for $17.99. Though my main purpose was to to get Bluetooth headsets for cheap to give to Aurelia and Sol for an early Christmas. They are two people who are on the phone quite a bit with their friends and complaining about how their hand or neck hurts from all the talking they do. Sol ended up getting the exact same model Bluetooth headset as me for his phone. He was a bit limited in his choices due to his phone being an older model Sony Ericsson P910i, so I got him the HBH-V705 which is a nice, sleek model with a very professional polish to its look. I managed to snag that for 50% off which was an awesome kill! Aurelia was hoping for the slick Jabra headset she had her heart on, but well she found a Plantronic MiX tower that had more female oriented headsets there. She would get the MiX 330 which is a remix of the original Plantronics Explorer 330 with a white and silver body color and adorned with Swarovski crystals. The MiX 330 ended up being $20 off so it was not too bad. They both were stoked for me to front for their gifts, which ultimately made me happy.
I was not about to leave empty handed, I wanted to see if I could pick up a PSP title for cheap. I found the last copy of Guilty Gear Judgment (with the bonus Guilty Gear XX #reload) and a screen protector for normal price, but it should be plenty fun for when I need my "fighter" or "beat-em-up" fix. While the game was not popular, it beats the imported edition from Japan where Judgment and Guilty Gear XX #reload were both separate game UMD's at $30 - $40 a disc.
Everyone walked out happy, which I was thankful for. Sure, we waited in bitter cold for about close to an hour to get in the shop, but the "spoils of war" were grand. The expensive part of my gifting is done, but the last will come in 2 weeks when I go shopping at Strapya World for everyone else. I just want to put some good karma in the pool for all of those who've supported me when I was down. Not all things can be had at Black Friday, however...
This year, I have noticed that the deals were mediocre rather than spectacular in the paper/in-store ads. The online shops are finally getting better with their "ads" or Thanksgiving sales. Apple did their sale online with slashing prices about $300 here and their on their machines. Newegg has continued on with their tradition as usual. Some shops like Best Buy and Target has some "ONLINE ONLY" specials that you simply couldn't rush to the store for. I feel the next step forward will only be a fusion of both sorts of sales for places that have a physical store front... But at the same rate, they need to make sure the servers can handle the loads of shoppers pounding the servers. I was unable to get in on a deal at Frys.com for the 4GB Memory Stick Pro Duo as the server kept timing out, but on finally being able to... the server had a MySQL error preventing the transaction from going on any further. Oh well, there's always next time.
With school this semester, I have never thought to see book expenses get dramatically higher with the passing days. It was nice in the early days, but now, it gets more and more pricey with school expenditures. Some classes require additional texts to supplement the learning and even some classes require gadgets. I'll talk on gadgets later on... Some folks are more fortunate to get student loans, others even more so with scholarships and other awards from private organizations or the government. There are also the younger folks who are privileged to have their parents foot the bill without even seeing a dime come to their own pocket books...
For most of my college life, I have footed the bill for my textbooks but at a sacrifice to something I own or possess. Sure, there was the time my family even believed in my education... but even then it was question of sacrifice.
That was always the "rules of engagement". My family never believed in loans and my luck wasn't too great with scholarships save for only one time. So I would just begin selling memories of my childhood off one-by-one. Things like rare games begin to fade from my collection, all just to fund a book that I would use once and possibly never get near the desired street value again. Once that bastion was exhausted, my last bastion was invaded... My electric guitar. Once I sold that, pretty much most of my childhood relics had finally been lost. Sure, my childhood wasn't too great, but I wish that I never had to lose those pieces of my life. Now, I have had to put aside my commitment to pay off the IRS and another debt... why? I paid $700 to get back into school and I still need to make a "contribution" to my family, before my book expenses...
You can keep your games and fail or you can sell your possessions and learn... Choose!
But let's get down to the cost and tactics for books...
With the modern era, textbooks for classes can easily reach $300 - $500 depending on the required curriculum's requests. There are some instructors feel that the textbook is only an additional "tool" and not a necessity, so that leaves a student to invest time to be in class or the lack of investing in a book becomes the sword that cuts a GPA asunder all from skipping class. There are some which endorse getting the previous edition, prior to the newest printing which is a great way to save some serious cash from the hard depreciation of an older edition. Last way to save a buck or two is just to hit up your local craigslist site and just try searching for the books there... With the advent of social networks, Facebook even has a marketplace where you can plug up ISBN's and they will filter local sales to find local deals. If you're unlucky to be stuck with no one local selling... You have two options:
- Buy from an online vendor and play the waiting game (I got unlucky once and had my book delayed for an entire month once...)
- Buy from the unofficial off-campus bookstore
- Buy directly from the school bookstore.
The first can be a godsend, as there are merchants like abebooks which sells some books for a significant fraction off of the street price. The main caveat is that some of the books are "International Edition" meaning that they were initially sold in other countries, but are still the same book. Which leads me next point, because of the international editions, the books could ship from (for example) Germany. The books are not from abebooks, but they are "marketed" there via third party, much like how Amazon had their "marketplace" set up if you want a used copy of something. Caveat Emptor. (Buyer beware for those not Latin initiated.) The last two can be a bit painful as used can range from $47 - $85 and new from $160 - $200+. The good part is that you are picking up the book in person... so there's no question if you have the wrong book or one that's not compatible with the course.
Of course... now there are the wacky gadgets that instructors require you to buy to get through class. electronic clickers and remotes to electronically respond to pop-quizzes. Those can range from $15 - $20, despite a few teachers saying "A used one should run you a couple bucks in an off-campus book shop." I would hate to be the unfortunate soul who signs up for 2 classes with a requirement to get a JoinIn remote ($20 new) and an iClicker ($20). I was unlucky to be drained to $0 after mine and I still don't have enough money for my books.
Personally, if teachers could say "Log on to my site and you can read the book on my Flash applet" or the school tuition fee could encompass for downloadable books, it'd be great! We should be making use of technology to make education cheaper for the masses. Hell, an e-book device issued out and then "docked" in a class terminal to get a copy of the book would be a great idea. The in-class responders aren't too bad... But why not make the books digital? A few schools are doing this in response that heavy books are hurting the backs of children... Why can't college students get the same deal?
